Steven H. Chaffee, a highly
regarded communication scholar and Janet M. Peck Professor of
International Communication, Emeritus, died unexpectedly on May 15
at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, Calif. He was
65.

The
cause of death was cardiac arrest following a circulatory
problem.

"Steve was the outstanding
communication research scholar of his generation," said Henry
Breitrose, a professor in the Department of Communication. "What he
brought to the department, in the doctoral program and in
communication research, was an intellectual rigor."

Chaffee had a long
association with Stanford. He first came to the university in 1963,
when he did graduate studies under communication research pioneer
Wilbur L. Schramm, who established Stanford's Institute for
Communication Research. In 1981, Chaffee returned to the university
as a professor in the Department of Communication. He retired from
the department in 1999 after having served as chairman two times:
from 1986 to 1990 and from 1996 to 1999.

His
research focused primarily on the role of politics in mass
communication.

"He
was one of the foremost scholars of political communication, of how
people used and responded to mass media for political information
and how the mass media exerted political influence," said Donald
Roberts, the Thomas More Storke Professor of
Communication.

Chaffee wrote 13 books and
more than 100 articles and book chapters in his lifetime. He
co-edited the heavily used graduate text, Handbook of
Communication Science. For many years, Chaffee also edited
Communication Research, a scholarly journal, and he served
as president of the International Communication
Association.

He
was much admired by colleagues. In 1999, Chaffee received the Paul
J. Deutschmann Award for career excellence in research from the
Association for Education in Journalism and Mass
Communication.

Equally important, Chaffee
was known as an extraordinary mentor to graduate students. "He was
wonderful at helping students frame questions," Breitrose
said.

One
of Chaffee's recent projects was studying Kids Voting USA, an
effort to encourage schoolchildren to participate in elections. His
research indicated that children's civic enthusiasm made their
parents more likely to vote.

After his retirement from
Stanford in 1999, Chaffee accepted the Arthur N. Rupe Chair in the
Social Effects of Mass Communication at the University of
California-Santa Barbara. He taught at UCSB for two
years.

Chaffee was a native
Californian. Born in South Gate, Calif., in 1935, he earned his
bachelor's degree at the University of Redlands and his master's in
journalism at the University of California-Los Angeles. He worked
as a journalist at several Los Angeles-area newspapers before
becoming a communication scholar.

After earning his doctorate
from Stanford in 1965, Chaffee worked as a professor at the School
of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison until 1981, when he returned to Stanford to teach
in the Department of Communication. Chaffee also was affiliated
with the Department of Political Science here. He served as
director of the Institute for Communication Research from 1981 to
1985 and again from 1994 to 1996. Chaffee also led the master's
program in media studies from 1992 to 1996 and the doctoral program
in communication from 1993 to 1996.

Chaffee had a passion for
non-scholarly communication, too. He loved movies and was able to
recall film dialogue verbatim, Breitrose said. He also was an avid
volleyball player, who coaxed the Communication Department into
games on the Oval in front of the Quad, Breitrose
recalled.

Chaffee is survived by his
wife, Debra Lieberman, a researcher at the Institute for Social,
Behavioral and Economic Research at the University of
California-Santa Barbara, and their 10-year-old son, Eliot, both of
Santa Barbara. He also is survived by three adult children from his
marriage to Sheila Chaffee of Madison, Wis., Laura Friedrichs, Adam
Chaffee and Amy Chaffee, and three grandchildren, Calvin Chaffee,
Colin Friedrichs and Harper Friedrichs. He is survived by two
siblings as well, Elaine Kern Brooks and Henry Paul
Kinghorn.

Memorial services were held
May 18 at Congregation B'nai Brith, Santa Barbara.

The
family requests that, in lieu of flowers, contributions be made in
Chaffee's name to the Yosemite Association, P.O. Box 230, El
Portal, CA 95318.